Welcome to Whitehall, PA!

Welcome to Whitehall, PA! (Just north of Allentown, aka A-Town)

 

This past week's been a huge change. I showed up to transfer meeting on Tuesday wondering where I was going to go. The way transfer meetings go down is that those staying in their areas stand on one side of the gym and the ones leaving stand on the other side. We all split up and watched the slideshow and the pictures and names pop up with their new companions. Soon I was the last one standing there, trying to rack my brain of all the sisters' areas that had an opening. To my surprise, I found out that my new companion was Sister Munson (who wasn't at the meeting yet (traffic gets you every time)) and we were doubling in to Whitehall North. Say what?! To those of you who don't know what doubling in is, it basically means that two missionaries get put into an area at the same time. But in our case, we were put in charge of opening a brand new area that had been split from the Elders. We got our car, phone, and an empty Area Book. I kept asking the Assistants about the apartment and what it had ("Is there toilet paper? Are there pots and pans? Are there beds?!") and they told me they didn't know. I was probably bothering them so much, because I had no idea what was happening, really. They handed us a check and and address and told us to go pay the landlord and find out what the apartment needed.

 

So we left for Whitehall with a vision of living in a cement bunker. We pulled up in front of a house. Confused, we called the landlord and the front door flew open. Turns out we were living with a member! Her name is Sister LaRose, and she is awesome. She's a left-handed writer who graduated in Art History, who loves clocks and nautical things. Yep, she's awesome. She also has a piano in her house that we've been able to play in our free time.

 

Here we were in Whitehall with probably six phone numbers and the address to the church. We called the Whitehall South Elders (the ones whose area we split from) and met them at the church. We divided up the area and got a few more phone numbers and were left to work. So, to make a long week short, we started from basically nothing. But we've spent this past week mostly working on the map and trying to meet the members. We're still going to be spending a lot of time on the map, but it's been an interesting experience preparing an area to be worked on. I'm so excited for the miracles and people that the Lord has prepared here; the ward's been praying for Sisters for quite some time, and it's been very humbling to be responsible for starting up the work in an area.

 

SO... GENERAL CONFERENCE. Whoo! I loved it so much. I can't wait to reread and rewatch the talks. One thing I realized from Conference is that the gospel truly is very simple. The Prophet and Apostles don't go into really obscure corners of doctrine, but they teach simply the truths of the gospel, as Jesus did. One overlying theme I noticed was obedience. Because it is the first law of heaven, all blessings are predicated upon whether we are obedient or not. It's as simple as that.

 

I'm so very grateful for the opportunity to listen to the words of the Lord. General Conference, the Prophet, and the Apostles are all a show of God's love for us. Heavenly Father loves us so much that he's called his servants to teach His word.

 

Until next week,

Sister Singleton